フランス北部のラアーグの再処理工場から毎月最低１回、南仏のマルクールの燃料加工工場まで陸路運搬されるプルトニウムがテログループに窃取され、ものの数分以内に「汚い爆弾」(dirty bombs)になる可能性があるが、運送中のプルトニウムの護衛は極めてお粗末な状況であると、クリントン政権の核安全保障問題の専門家だった人が語ったそうです。この人が、反原発で知られるグリーンピースの委託で行なった調査報告の中で明らかにされたものですが、これによると、毎回のプルトニウム輸送には１０名以下の護衛がついているだけで、もし３名程度のテロリストに攻撃されれば皆殺し。キャスク(輸送容器)を爆破させて中からプルトニウムを取り出し、それを大気に放出するのにたった数秒しかかからないだろうとしています。この人はまた、2004年に米国からフランスに（燃料加工のために）輸送された140kgのプルトニウムについてもテロ攻撃のリスクが高かったとしています。その後このプルトニウムは燃料加工されて、今後２，３週間以内に米国に返送されることになっていますが、テロ攻撃の標的にされやすい、しかし、コジェマ社は彼の意見は「絶対に間違っている」として拒否した、と言っているようです。これに対しコジェマ社の輸送責任者は、このキャスクはIAEAの専門家によって安全と判定されたもので、テロ攻撃には極めて強いと反論している由。以下詳しいことは次のNew Scientistの記事で。ご参考まで。

11:39 15 March 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Rob Edwards

Plutonium being transported across France could be attacked by terrorists and turned into dirty bombs in a matter of minutes, a US nuclear security expert is warning.

Cargoes of plutonium oxide are taken by road at least once a month from nuclear plants at La Hague in the north to Marcoule in the south to make fuel for French reactors. But according to Ronald Timm, a consultant from Lemont, Illinois, US, and for 5 years a senior nuclear security advisor to the US Clinton administration, the shipments are very poorly guarded.

"The protection afforded these everyday shipments is virtually non-existent," he claims. In a study commissioned by the anti-nuclear group, Greenpeace, he concludes that they are at "extreme risk" of terrorist attack.

Each shipment has less than a dozen guards and they could all be killed in a surprise attack by as few as three armed terrorists, he argues. Then it would only take "seconds" to break open the transport casks with power tools or explosives, he claims, and to start releasing plutonium into the environment.

Another possibility is that the plutonium could be stolen with the intention of making it into nuclear bombs. The risk to the health and safety of the public in France is "of grave concern", Timm says.

"Prime target"

His study also assesses a controversial cargo of 140 kilograms of plutonium oxide, sent to France from the US in 2004, as being at "high risk" of terrorist attack. The plutonium has now been made into fuel and is due to be transported back to the US in the next few weeks.

The plutonium casks transported from the US were a "prime sabotage target" but were only designed to withstand accidents and not "malevolent attacks", Timm alleges. However, this is rejected by the French nuclear company, Cogema, as "absolutely wrong".

The casks are approved as safe by scientists from the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, says Cogema's head of transport, Henry-Jacques Neau. "They are able to withstand deliberate attack, and are extremely safe," he told New Scientist.

It is always possible to imagine "sensationalist" scenarios but in reality the security arrangements were "perfectly adequate", Neau says. "Every time Greenpeace gets experts - or pseudo-experts - to produce reports they have proved to be of no value."

(提供：熱田利明氏）